CHRISTIAN SOLDIER IN A SECULAR CITY
by
John Pickering
(originally published in the Washington Post, May 12, 1996, at C1)
*Copyright 1996 by John D. Pickering
(john.pickering@juno.com or jpickeri@balch.com)
A few months ago, I finished the search for my first real job
after law school. The best advice I received during the entire effort
was quite simple: try to seem like "a normal person" during job
interviews. A person, that is, who is easy to get along with,
reasonably fun to be around, but also serious about work.
To seem normal. To be honest, it wasn't too hard to pull off. I
am, after all, a pretty normal guy: In college, I did a little student
government politicking, ran on the track team, stayed up too late on
weekends (and occasionally slept through class), wrote for the campus
newspaper, made some good friends and tried to teach myself to play
guitar. I stayed on for an extra year to pick up an M.B.A. because I
knew it would benefit me down the road. Then I headed off to law
school, where I made law review and also married my wife Jennifer.
After law school, I took a one-year position as a law clerk to a
federal appellate court judge in Washington, D.C., and now I'm working
as an associate with a large law firm in Birmingham, Alabama.
My background gives me everything I need to be perfectly at home
in American culture. I follow political developments closely. I work
hard but make time for social activities. I even watch "Friends" and
"Seinfeld" on Thursday nights. And yet, there's something different
about me. It's not something I keep secret, but it's something that
people are surprised to find out. I'm an evangelical Christian.
I believe the Bible to be the authentic word of God--from the Old
Testament accounts of Earth's creation, Adam's fall and Noah's ark to
the New Testament narratives of Christ's birth, death and resurrection.
I even believe that biblical injunctions about moral behavior are
binding on people today.
But I've found that the more I progress intellectually and
professionally, the more I encounter people--often friends--who find
it a little odd, even threatening, when they discover my religious
identity. I could therefore sympathize with Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia when the media showed such surprise that he--gasp!--
spoke publicly of believing in miracles, including the resurrection of
Jesus Christ.
I first realized how out-of-fashion and backward my beliefs were
as a freshman at Vanderbilt University, when I attended a dorm meeting
about sexuality, date rape and cohabitation. I quickly learned that the
Biblical sexual ethics my parents had taught me had been replaced with
what boils down to three less-than-demanding standards: (1) "No" means
"no"; (2) Always be considerate of roommates; and (3) Always use a
condom.
In the classroom, I found professors who understood Christianity
as nothing more than an outmoded, patriarchal system of oppression.
With rare exceptions, those in the humanities found Biblical teachings
hostile to a person's self worth and potential for achievement; those
in the sciences thought Darwinistic evolutionary theory had proven
man's independence from God.
The professors tolerated students who thought otherwise, but only
as a parent tolerates a child with a belief in an invisible playmate.
Ultimately I realized that the university's only efforts to recognize
students' spiritual existence centered on convincing the various
religious communities on campus-- whether evangelical Protestant,
Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim or otherwise--that they really all
believe the same thing anyway, so they might as well stop worrying
about their differences and concentrate on peaceful coexistence.
When I went to law school at the University of Texas, my
Christian faith was greeted with a similar bemusement. Now, however, I
was among older students who were getting married and starting
families, and campus politics gave way to concerns about real life. At
law firm recruiting receptions, students and lawyers would ask my wife,
"So what will you be doing once John finishes law school?" When she
replied that she wasn't looking for a job, but planning to care for the
children we hope to have, questioners often didn't know how to respond.
(Once, someone actually asked her why she had bothered to go to
college.)
As for our plans for a family, I heard discussions in the law
review office about how global overpopulation made it "irresponsible"
and "dangerous" for a couple to have more than two children. And when
my classmates discussed children's education, they debated topics like
whether public schools could constitutionally segregate boys from
girls. Most of my peers weren't even aware of the Christian school and
home-schooling movements.
Although the disdain toward biblical Christianity may be most
palpable in the university environment, it is by no means limited to
that sphere. My wife and I go to movies and watch TV, only to be
confronted with skillful artistic portrayals of people who lack any
spiritual dimension in their lives. (About the only TV families to go
to church and take it seriously were the Waltons, the "Little House on
the Prairie" crew, and the folks in Mayberry. As warm and strong as
these characters were, they obviously don't fit the Hollywood image of
modern humanity--or mine, for that matter.)
Finally, in case we somehow missed the point, Jennifer and I were
taught during our university experiences and through our consumption of
mass media that we're not supposed to let any "religious" ideas
influence our political views. The message comes through loud and clear
that we are outsiders whose opinions on important matters are quirky at
best and dangerous at worst.
To be sure, friends who don't share my faith are often stunned to
discover my Christian commitment. But there is also a surprise in store
for those who think that I'm as abnormal as the general culture says I
am. For, throughout my education, I have always found others who, like
me, worship a God who instructs His children instead of asking them
what they want.
Furthermore, these people have educational and professional
credentials equal to those of their secular peers. They are doctoral
candidates in competitive national programs, they are working in the
country's top businesses and top law firms, and they are even Supreme
Court law clerks.
Of course, if all evangelicals were simply intelligent people
with spiritual inclinations, our religious identity would carry little
significance. But as evangelicals gain access to different worlds of
influence, we bring with us a biblical worldview that will not change
to conform to the predominant cultural norms. We reject the harsh
distinctions our culture makes between the private, sacred portions of
our lives and the public, secular portions.
While we don't seek to force everyone to convert to Christianity,
we do proselytize and attempt to bring biblical truth to bear in every
part of public life. This means that when we think about political
issues, we seek to "think Christianly," to borrow the phrase of British
literary scholar Harry Blamires. This is a difficult endeavor in a
modern world unfamiliar with the concept. It demands an intellectual
commitment to mastering revealed truths about God, human nature and
good and evil, and a careful application of these principles to the
problems of society.
I came to understand the importance of such thinking in my study
of constitutional law. Unlike many other students, I found myself
deeply troubled by the tendency of modern constitutional law to
seemingly ignore what the Constitution says and what it meant to those
who wrote and ratified it.
Such an approach is necessary if one is to justify Supreme Court
and appellate court decisions purporting to apply the Constitution to
strike down state laws regarding suicide or abortion, or to order
busing of schoolchildren to achieve racial balance, or to order the
exclusion of valuable evidence in criminal trials on technical grounds.
Whatever the merits of these decisions, they obviously weren't dictated
by what the Founders wrote in our Constitution.
The vision of a restrained judiciary, construing and applying the
Constitution but not rewriting it, and sticking as close as it can to
the Constitution's original meaning, goes in legal circles by the name
of originalism. Not surprisingly, liberal law professors and judges
hate it. In fact, the legal academic community is almost monolithically
united against originalism in a way that it is not united for or
against anything else. As University of Virginia law professor Lillian
BeVier has said, originalism is to constitutional law what abstinence
is to public school sex education --a completely alien concept.
But originalism made perfect sense to me, and now I understand
why. It wasn't because I'm conservative (although I am), and it wasn't
because I think judges should avoid legislating from the bench
(although I do). It was more fundamental than that: I believe that
words carry with them the meaning imparted to them by their speaker. I
derive this belief from my approach to Scripture.
Specifically, I read the Bible as having an articulate and
unchanging meaning. I therefore reject biblical interpretive methods
that subject the text to the scalpel of higher criticism, seeking to
blow away the supposed dust of human error to reach the "real truth"
that lies outside the miracles of Jesus and the alleged myths of
creation, fall and resurrection. When I read the Bible, I expect to
learn what God has to say, not what I'd like for God to say.
In the same way, when I read the Constitution, I try to discern
what the Framers had to say, not what I might wish they'd said. I
therefore can't accept the mainstream legal view that the Constitution
is a "growing document" whose meaning develops over time, even if doing
so would justify some outcomes I might find appealing.
A Biblical worldview has many other obvious applications in
public life. The Bible presents religion not as a private affair that
belongs only in the prayer closet, but as a force that encompasses
families, communities, and, yes, even the state. For the evangelical
Christian, this proposition carries with it the serious duty of
bringing Christian truth to bear on matters worth contemplating and
discussing, including worship, child rearing, music, education,
federalism, welfare reform and tax policy.
But to develop a "Christian mind," to use another of Blamires'
phrases, requires something much more sophisticated than proposing to
enact the Ten Commandments into law. It demands an intellectual
commitment to mastering revealed truths about God, human nature and
good and evil--and a careful, tolerant application of these principles
to the problems faced by contemporary society.
When evangelicals consider political issues, we start with a
commitment to absolute standards of right and wrong and a knowledge of
humanity's tendency to act sinfully. It is true that our approach
doesn't produce automatic answers, but it makes our search for
solutions different and, we think, useful to the community at large.
For those of us who choose to participate in the public arena, to take
any other direction would also be to "grow" our way out of
Christianity, and that's not an acceptable option.
In light of the implicit "No Christians need enter" signs I've
seen posted in the entry ways to the public square, I've been tempted
to consider myself a victim. I've even been occasionally tempted to
enter into an isolated world of fellow believers, and, sadly, some of
my friends have done so. But to follow them would be to abandon my
Christian obligations to my secular friends and to the world in which I
live.
Moreover, a measure of acceptance for evangelicals in the public
arena is beginning to develop. Three years ago, a Washington Post news
story labeled evangelicals "poor, uneducated and easy to command," a
backwoods stereotype it wouldn't dare repeat today. Instead, the
mainstream media have started, however slowly, to acknowledge that
evangelical Christians are thinking individuals with a legitimate voice
in social policy debates and party politics. If progress continues, the
coverage of evangelicals will increasingly focus on their ideas rather
than on their religious motivations.
But evangelicals aren't out of the (back)woods yet. Young
Christians like me still face the daily burden of explaining our
faith's relevance. As we move forward in our careers, we cannot and
will not keep our faith locked up in the prayer closet.
John D. Pickering
e-mail: john.pickering@juno.com
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